“It’s not a bug, it’s a feature” – The problem with SemVer
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ie. your knowledge of the API's semantics. Hence, semantic versioning. Mystery solved?
I think that's one of the reasons why Packager Versioning can be useful: The packager picks an upstream release, forming the base of the package version (for example, "12.2.2"), and appends an indicator that this is the first release of the package (so now we have "12.2.2-1"). Increasing that last number means updating the packager's changelog with an explanation of which fixes were cherry picked, and what other changes are done.
There's also capability for derivative packagers to add their own information, and for testing/backports packages that are lower-priority than the more "official" ones.
So, although Semantic Versioning is fine, I still like having packager version numbers!